Abstract:

The topic of academic integrity (AI) has recently gained importance worldwide. In Latvia, from 2019, these issues have been revisited in initiatives of the Ministry of Education and Science and higher education institutions (HEIs). Taking into account the increasing diversity of challenges related to AI, HEIs face the need to create research and an educational environment based on a sustainable culture of AI. The current study aims to explore awareness of AI issues and views on the implementation of AI in their HEIs of social sciences students from Latvian regional HEIs.

The first group of research questions pertained to the general issues of AI, namely:
1) What is the awareness of students in terms of AI/dishonesty,
2) How do they evaluate the politics of AI and its implementation at their HEI, and
3) What are the students’ suggestions regarding AI promotion?

The second group of questions focused on differences in students' awareness of AI between HEI and depending on gender, speciality, and level of study. The sample of this study consisted of 320 students from four small regional universities in Latvia, representing four specialization groups (study programs in education, psychology, management, law) and four study level groups (professional education, bachelor, master and doctoral studies). Data were collected using a mixed method Internet survey consisting of nine qualitative questions and two quantitative questions with scalable answers. Inductive thematic analysis was applied to qualitative data from the survey, while quantitative data was subjected to statistical analysis. The results of the study show the satisfactory awareness of students in terms of AI/dishonesty. In general, they evaluated the politics of AI and its implementation in their HEIs as relevant and meaningful; however, a certain number of respondents did not provide the answer or reported insufficient knowledge of this issue. Student suggestions regarding the promotion of AI are mostly related to positive and negative incentives, adequate deadlines and amount of workload, technological solutions, and regular communication between faculty and students. It appears that student awareness of AI differs among four HEIs depending on recent engagement of HEI in AI-related projects; also, female students showed better awareness than male students. It was no surprise that awareness of AI was positively correlated with the level of education. Overall, the student awareness was also depending on the specialization – students from psychology and law programs showed a slightly higher awareness of AI. The results of this study have important implications for regional HEIs in Latvia in improving the communication and procedures of AI policy in light of student perspectives. One of the avenues for further research would be the triangulation of data from students with the views of teachers from the above-mentioned HEIs.

Keywords:

Academic integrity, regional higher education, awareness about academic integrity.